


Guilty

by toudoujinpachi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: titan trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toudoujinpachi/pseuds/toudoujinpachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bertholdt struggles to deal with his overwhelming guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilty

Bertholdt self-harmed. It wasn't anything major and it wasn't anywhere near enough. He made it seem like an accident: a sliced finger when checking over equipment; a grazed knee from an "clumsy" fall; a bruised elbow from a too-hard whack against the dresser each morning. It was so disjointed that nobody could even come close to the truth. A cut for each life that he had extinguished; a rush of pain that was only a one hundredth of what those helpless people had had to suffer when the titans had came spilling through the hole in the wall that he had created.

Annie was no use - she was so unapproachable, and Bertholdt got all flustered when he tried to talk to her. Anyways, she hadn't even done anything yet and if he had tried to unburden on her she probably would have told him to stop being so stupid they were just humans, and, focus on the mission Fubar. Annie didn't understand what it was like to watch someone die and know that without a doubt it was your fault, that it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done something so wrong, so evil that you lay awake into the early hours of the morning wondering what life would have been like if you'd never been born in the first place. And in any case, she didn't seem to want anything with her two childhood friends - maybe she thought that if she didn't interact with them she could persuade herself that she wouldn't one day end up like them; full of regret. She had it so lucky.

He wished he could talk to Reiner about what they had done together: about all the people they'd killed together; about all the men and women and old ladies and little kids they'd murdered together. He wanted to know if it would be worth it in the end - if all these wasted lives were weighed up next to the eventual rewards would the scales be even? It was alright for Reiner: he was so lost in his soldier fantasy that it was easy to mistake him for an actual human, and not what he truly was. Bertholdt was always hesitant bringing it up with Reiner, terrified he would shatter the fragile facade made of morals and beliefs and be left with only a shadow of his best friend, who was inept at dealing with their burning sin. Or worse, he could be left with the cruel boy from the homeland who had be heartless and cold. The boy who had only ever had only ever had one moral and belief - kill the humans like they want to kill us.

Bertholdt didn't like talking to others - when he did words had poured from his mouth in a seemingly endless flow until Reiner had snapped at him and told him to shut the hell up already. From then on he had left all the talking to Reiner, and if the moment did call for conversation on his part he would blabber on about equipment or manoeuvres - something that couldn't lead to spilt secrets. He didn't want to risk Reiner losing it again, because recently he had been acting more and more like his old self and Bertholdt worried that if he pushed him too much he would snap just in the same way he had snapped the necks of the injured animals Bertholdt had wanted to care for. 

He found himself thinking about death a lot, specifically his own, which was a subject that had never even crossed his mind before. He wondered if God existed - he knew that the Wallists weren't true, a religion built on corruption and lies - but he speculated that there must be some kind of deity out there... Surely. Surely? It couldn't all end with death, could it? There had to be something more. He spent the empty hours at the end of every night when everyone else had already drifted off questioning the possibility of an after-life, and more importantly whether or not he would be able to get into it. What he had done was unforgivable, but could he ever be forgiven if he had only been following orders?


End file.
